Body Work

Availability:
Ebook in EPUB format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2022

ISBN-13: 9781773241036

<p><i>If Body Work</i> begins by writing desire through a belief in the stability of the physical body, this is undone in exploring symptoms of disease, new self-knowledge and rewriting one's personal story. Because <i>Body Work</i> explicitly undertakes to write of a protracted and often painful period of chronic illness, these poems complicate notions of ability and disability. Connecting all six long poems are prose footnotes chronicling a natural history of human skin. This emphasis on skin, as metaphor for the body, allows for both an exploration of the desire for connection as well as a fear of vulnerability. <i>Body Work</i> is also interested in expanding notions of what poetry is, or could be, and is especially interested in both language play and innovative lyricism. Of this poetry, Julia Emberley, editor of <i>English Studies in Canada</i> says: "Emilia Nielsen plays the dermographer and writes the skin as if she is wearing its language inside out. There is a lusciousness in Nielsen's language; you can not only taste the words but also feel the desire for touch in them." In spare, arresting language, <i>Body Work</i> explores not only pleasure but pain, wondering how to repair a self forever changed by illness.</p><p>If <i>Body Work</i> begins by writing desire through a belief in the stability of the physical body, this is undone in exploring symptoms of disease, new self-knowledge and rewriting one’s personal story. Because <i>Body Work</i> explicitly undertakes to write of a protracted and often painful period of chronic illness, these poems complicate notions of ability and disability. Connecting all six long poems are prose footnotes chronicling a natural history of human skin. This emphasis on skin, as metaphor for the body, allows for both an exploration of the desire for connection as well as a fear of vulnerability. <i>Body Work</i> is also interested in expanding notions of what poetry is, or could be, and is especially interested in both language play and innovative lyricism. Of this poetry, Julia Emberley, editor of <i>English Studies in Canada </i>says: “Emilia Nielsen plays the dermographer and writes the skin as if she is wearing its language inside out. There is a lusciousness in Nielsen’s language; you can not only taste the words but also feel the desire for touch in them.” In spare, arresting language, <i>Body Work</i> explores not only pleasure but pain, wondering how to repair a self forever changed by illness.</p>